No, no, no, no, noIm not implying that boosting is the only way to get units, but im saying that it is A way of getting MORE units, quicker.Fact.two players have 6K metal. the non booster builds 60 menthe booster boosts 18K metal and 150 workers, and gets 150 men. simple.But im saying that IF well coordinated, a HEAVY boosting alliance is VIRTUALLY unstoppable.

BUT this is not the point. Back to the subject.What are the differences between old and new, just acknowledging that the old BD had a much vaster fanbase.

It does feel like there's less people, but i don't know why, it could be advertisement, BD used to be #1 or #2 in the voting sites but now it's mostly fallen to 5 or below, so people don't even try it as much.

Talking late-game, boosts will be 6k metal for small boost, 12k metal for big boost. Then there's the 5k emergency boost.

Hypothetically, this makes someone able to get 6000*4 + 12000*2 + 5000 = 53000 metal every 48 ticks from boosting only. That is over 1000 metal per tick. I don't think there are many players that have that kind of income, and then you have to consider that boosters have normal income as well.

I'm not making a case here for lowering boosters' rewards, just pointing out that it actually IS quite a difference.

As for old BD being more fun, I completely agree with you.. And I also have the feeling there were more players back then than there are now.

Differences between then and now that I remember?

- Bounties- Unlimited space in colony to create units- You could go over the res limit while offline- You could go over 1000 workers from your normal boost... Like if you were at 999 and got +100 you'd be at 1099, nowadays you'd be at 1000.- Conquers gave MUCH more income.. Man I miss those days.- Wrecks spawned at 1 per tick- Damage units did less damage- You only needed 12 ticks to raze an OP..- Nukes didn't give radiation- Nukes didn't kill 10% of units that were 1 tick off- We had old spies where you could be safe by keeping your spy on your colony from tick 1- You could nuke relics

I can probably think of some more later.

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Made by KazeToushin, thank you!

Won both Championship Eras as rank 1, hold best of all times rank 1, hold the power record and practically every other record.

But there was legitimate reasons why most of those were removed. Although they were fun if they weren't abused. I feel like there were less players playing around the time when 3 ticks came and 3 or 4 eras passed. Maybe see what happened during those times?

But there was legitimate reasons why most of those were removed. Although they were fun if they weren't abused. I feel like there were less players playing around the time when 3 ticks came and 3 or 4 eras passed. Maybe see what happened during those times?

By now I'm simply wondering if the few that abused it were worth removing these aspects completely.. I really loved old BD much more.

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Made by KazeToushin, thank you!

Won both Championship Eras as rank 1, hold best of all times rank 1, hold the power record and practically every other record.

So do you think this is true? Or that it was harded to just pay and win back then as an alliance with many more members could be better organised, and much more affective even without paying?Maby the fact that alliances are only 10 members now allow the BIG donaters to get together and rule quite easily?This was not the case before with much bigger alliances.

Not true. With alliance capacities in the upwards of 20 members or more, we had just as many sub alliances and it was hard for newer and more casual players to assemble a complete team, and we lost more players than we retained.

OmegaXII wrote:

not all booster alliances are well coordinated, ive seen some pretty terrible boosters who were just terrible, they boosted like mad but couldnt even get into top 10, when osme of the top 10 didnt boost but had conquers to help them get up there

Precisely! On the old client, there were no limits. Now, we nerf supporters. Cooldowns limit how much you can get at any one time (something not present in the old client), and believe it or not, actually purchasing tokens to then spend on the boosts also slows the pace. As I said before, you used to be able to just outright purchase resources limitlessly with zero regulation. The new client is a DRASTIC improvement on this, as the ability to simply "mass boost" no longer exists. Mass boosting (purchasing all available boosts at once) STILL is not nearly as much as one could have purchased in just a few minutes on the OC.

We nerfed it. We made it so that you could only buy X amount in X amount of time. Of course it is still an advantage. IT SHOULD BE! We HAVE to make sure its worth it, otherwise no one will do it.

It is also very true that even mass boosting does not in ANY way guarantee a win. Ive seen on several occasions, alliances with few supporters (some cases with maybe one or two), take out whole alliances of mass supporters. Without skill, activity and teamwork, deep pockets or not, you still wont win.

Again, let me empasize that tokens didnt even exist on the old client. You might try and accuse us of being biased ONLY to supports, but remember, in the old client there was NO advantage given to non-supporters AT ALL. We intentionally put in a blue token structure to reward free to play players as well. If we were so biased against you, we would simply remove blue tokens altogether. Honestly, in a business sense, it makes more sense to have never put them in at all. After all, you cannot miss what was never had!

Then we would not have to bear the accusations and speculation when we naturally have to tweak the values later. It will happen. And as much as I hate to say it, there is always a chance that we will have to tweak it again down the road somewhere. I wouldn't expect it any time soon though. The new client went online in summer 2009, and this is the first time we have tweaked blue token values since then. If things go well, we would eventually (hopefully) be able to raise our expendatures to the F2P side of the model agian.

Please don't mistake a cold assessment as my personal opinion though. Naturally, as community manager, I am always inclined to look out for everyone across the board both free and pay to play. However, I also have to keep a balance from the business perspective, and well...reality.

The reality is that we have gone to great lengths throughout the years to extend ourselves to the free to play community and over that same amount of time have slowly nipped and tucked away the advantages of the supporting players. Of course we cant take everything away, as it still has to be worth supporting otherwise, well....

I understand that a great deal of you have not been here all that time, and may not recognize what I am saying. But for those that were here and played and especially were supporters in the old client, then you have seen how much advantage we have taken from supporters and given to non supports.

That being said, it is not realistic to say that we will never have to tweak token values both red and blue. If things get a little thin and we have to tighten our belt a little bit, I am sorry, but the first people to feel that are going to be the free to play players. Ironically, the more supporters supporting we have, the more liberal we are going to be able to be with free tokens.

This is nothing done out of greed. I promise you that as your community manger, I would not allow any such thing to happen unless there was a clear necessity for it. At least not willingly. I argue on your behalf (both free and pay to play) more than you will ever know and I do my best to address things I know will annoy you.

In this case, it was simply known that there was a need for the tweaking. The whole world (save China) is in a recession (Especially here in the USA). Less people have expendable income. It is natural and realistic. We are entertainment and completely reliant on expendable incomes across the spectrum of gaming society. If players have less to spend, we are naturally going to feel that.

That also being said, I am very sorry that this also trickles down to you. But when things are better for us, they are better for everyone. We have ALWAYS stuck to this. Our record over time clearly indicates that we do our best to tweak and balance things for everyone, both new and veteran, supporter and non supporter, vocal minority and silent majority.

It would be nice if folks could be a little more understanding when we finally have to back off of our free to play benefits for the first time in 3 years but I understand that many havent been around that long. The bottom line is; BD has improved quite a bit since the old days. Some might be nostalgic about smaller things present in the old days, but that is natural. It does not mean that BD has not improved.

Believe it or not BD actually lives more on free players than boosters... why?:- if no competition... no need to boost anyways...

another suggestion it seems instead of focusing more on changes in game conditions focus should increase on aggressive advertising... and accommodate more players... and changes made in the game to make it compatible with all kind of gadgets...(basically mobile phones)

Of course we focus on advertising. That does not fix all though. As I stated, we have had to, and are still in the process of tweaking things to make it so that people that end up here also stay. It isnt as simple as agressive advertising. And also, that costs money. Alot of money. Advertising of any decent quality what so ever, does not come easy.

I never said that we shouldnt value our free to play community. Obviously we do. We have taken great steps to balance the scales toward the free to play players, as I thoroughly explained above.

And being compatible with those gadgets is not as simple as you think. BD isnt some small flash arcade game. It is a large game built in flash. Some gadgets that support flash player already give you some access to BD. The issue is processing and memory. BD is a large game, and the ability to run in those gadgets is only hindered by the ability to run flash player and have enough memory and processing power to handle it.

That is not to say that we arent trying to figure out a way to give some functionality, or even smaller apps that can at least allow you to get incoming radar alerts, or receive in game messages to your gadget. These are things we already have in mind. But, development of such things will require the funds to back them. This is important to keep in mind.

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